Interviewing a Person and Not a CV

I have recently read a really interesting article that confirmed a belief of mine that I have had for a while, and that is that you should interview the person sat in from of you, and use their CV as a tool – not a decision maker. Let me take you through the steps…

Point 1

Identify a recruitment need, release a vacancy, receive CV’s, shortlist based on those CV’s. At this point, with the support of an agency (hopefully 360!) you should be looking at previous experience, key skills, how their education is relevant to the job role you have, how they have described themselves and also how the agency sees them. Through a tick list process we should be able to see whether the applicant is relevant. Based on their relevance for the job – we invite them in for an interview.

Point 2

The interview: It is worth bearing in mind that you have already qualified them as ‘suitable’ for the role and a possible candidate to join your team – we recommend you use the interview to see what value, as a team player, they would have on your team, overall ethos and what you are looking to achieving as a result of this recruitment drive.

Based on this simple two-step thought process we have made some suggestions of questions you may like to trial in order to see what a candidate is like as a worker/employee/team member/person fit.

Example Questions

Who do you aspire to and why?

What admirations do you have for that person and why?

What should I know about you that is not on your CV?

What would you change about yourself given the chance?

Is it acceptable to lie in business?

Would you rather be liked or feared?

Do you have any professional regrets? How would you rectify that now you have reflected upon it?

Look out for those answers:

So, you have made true steps through an interview process, you have interviewed your candidate with your standard questions and also you have now introduced some ‘personal exposure’ questions. What now?

Well, you are probably going to hear some answers to the above questions that you love! They may even show you immediately who you want to hire, but it is worth preparing yourself for some answers that expose exactly what you don’t want to hear. It is worth knowing that there really isn’t a right or wrong to the above questions and they are merely a fact-finding exercise to get to know someone.

So, why not grade them. ‘1’ meaning you hated the answer and it potentially put you off the candidate altogether, ‘5’ being a positive answer that you were genuinely taken aback and impressed with. You can collectively as an interviewing panel review any answers that are scored less than a 2.5 to ensure you have correctly graded and not mis-judged, this will also give the applicant a fair chance to expand, explain and justify.

It is vitally important that company and applicant are both given the chance to give the best possible account of themselves at interview!

SarahAuthor

I'm Sarah. A pro-active, results-producing professional working in the Recruitment, Training and Employment Sustainability Industry. I love to write about the latest industry topics, client success stories and solving various recruitment based problems within the UK. These are my words, enjoy!

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